April M. H. Blakeslee

Dr. April M. H. Blakeslee has a Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire and Masters and Bachelors degrees in Biology from Boston University (Boston, Massachusetts). Dr. Blakeslee is an Associate Professor of Biology at East Carolina University and Adjunct Faculty at Shoals Marine Laboratory (University of New Hampshire/Cornell University) and Miami University's Global Field Program. Dr. Blakeslee serves as Deputy-Editor-in-Chief for BioInvasions Records and Associate Editor for Aquatic Invasions and Diversity and Distributions. She is an appointed US member of the Working Group on the Introduction and Transfers of Marine Organisms (WGITMO) through the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). Prior to her faculty appointment, she received two competitive postdoctoral fellowships to work in the Marine Invasions Ecology Laboratory at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) in Edgewater, Maryland, where she performed research on marine invasive species and host-parasite interactions. Her research group focuses on marine and estuarine conservation biology and includes a diverse research program involving biodiversity, population genetics, parasite ecology, and biogeography as well as the unique and integrative insight that can be gained from studying biological invasions. Her research includes biogeography and phylogeography of free-living and parasite species; host-parasite interactions, host-parasite coevolutionary history, and parasite ecology; species invasion histories and vectors; population genetics and evolutionary ecology in native and non-native populations; and biodiversity and community ecology.